Empowerment Examples

Everyone’s heard of the worn and tired “employee empowerment” exhortation, but does anyone really walk the talk? Here are two specific and quantifiable empowerment examples from the same company. You be the judge.

For example, our annual planning process for FY 2010 included a review of business plans for HCL customer accounts not only by top management but by 8,000 people throughout the organization. Under the program, dubbed My Blueprint, the plans were available on a portal where customer-facing employees, who would be charged with implementing those plans, could comment on them. This produced a flood of feedback and prompted the re-engineering of several plans.

Every employee rates their boss, their boss’ boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see.